The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4)

by Rebecca Lochlann

  “You’re bonnier than the best of them put together,” Seaghan added, and he sounded sincere. “Curran was canny. He chose well.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “Thank you, Seaghan.”

  Another reference to beauty, the gilded invitation that won her this coveted position. Seaghan appeared to believe no more than that was required for her to be Curran’s perfect mate… or any man’s.

  It was disquieting to think that if she’d been plain, she might beg for farthings in Stranraer’s gutters as her belly rounded. None of the Glenelg folk would ever know of her. But because of beauty, she slept on fine sheets. She was served, cosseted, and spoiled.

  “Aodhàn’s had an accident.” Seaghan’s words jolted her out of her dark thoughts. “A good wetting in the sea.”

  Shock ran through her, then surprise at the breadth of her anxiety. “Was he hurt?”

  “He’ll live.”

  “What happened?”

  “Lass, if I knew, I’d have the man’s secrets cracked.” He paused. “One thing came out of it though. His lost memories. The sea stole them long ago, and it appears the sea has finally given them back. Yet still he won’t tell me how he came to be drowning in the ocean that day, nineteen years ago. In my opinion, it’s his damned— pardon me— closed-mouthed secrecy that keeps the gossip alive and thriving. That and his habit of spewing words in foul languages nobody understands, his refusal to choose a faith or attend a church, and his bloody habit of vanishing for days. As you know, Agnes claims he returns to the sea to visit his selkie kin.” He rolled his eyes; his sigh was patently long-suffering.

  After nineteen long years, Aodhàn Mackinnon’s memories were restored. It seemed momentous. Morrigan wondered if she would ever know him well enough to ask for his history. “I had a dream about a selkie,” she said.

  “Did you?” His smile was indulgent. “Did it change into a man, or a woman?”

  “Oh… it was just swimming.” She could never tell him or anyone how this selkie, once it transformed, had pressed against her, had kissed her, or how she had allowed it and wished for more.

  “To Agnes, it’s as clear and constant as the Five Sisters. He was found in the ocean, wounded, his memories washed away. Ever since, he disappears without warning, and when he reappears, he smells as though he’s been dunked in the Sound. Agnes needs no more than that.”

  “I’ll admit she warned me about him at the wedding cèilidh.”

  He snorted rudely. “Did I not tell you as much? But he does spend a good amount of time on the coast. I can well believe he’ll be a sea serpent’s breakfast one of these days. Which reminds me. We had a serpent sighting last month.”

  “Aye?”

  “William Watson and his cousin from Aberdeen borrowed Curran’s skiff, the Endeavor. It was a fine August day, no wind to speak of. They both saw the beast rise from the water, then up came its humps, one after the other… six of them. They saw it again the next day, and said it had a ruff of scales round its neck. Ferrymen on both sides of the Kyle Rhea swore they saw it too.”

  “We can never know what is down there, can we? There could be vast worlds, completely hidden from us.” She was thinking of Curran, of how he’d entered an underwater castle, fought a lion, loved a woman, and saved the earth. Now it seemed Aodhàn Mackinnon had a connection to water as well. Veering off this dangerous path, she asked, “Have you ever seen a sea serpent?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen many things I don’t much care to speak of, on dry land anyway. One of these days, I’ll tell you some tales.”

  “If I’m ever allowed out of this bed.”

  The lines in his face softened. “I can see you hate to be confined. I’d feel the same, were it me. I’d be a devil, no doubt about it. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “You’re doing it, Seaghan. Entertaining me. I’m grateful.”

  There came a great pounding on the stairs then, and Curran burst in, surprising them both. “Morrigan,” he said, crossing to the bed in three big steps. He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into an embrace. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Forgive me, Morrigan. Will you forgive me?”

  She couldn’t help laughing as he kissed her, over and over again, on her cheeks, her eyelids, and her mouth, paying no attention to Seaghan at all.

  “Poor lass,” he said between kisses. “I was selfish and cruel. Come now. I’m taking you to the garden. It’s a bonny, bonny day, and I don’t care what Eleanor says.”

  He scooped her into his arms while Seaghan laughed and so did Violet, and carried her down the stairs, out of Kilgarry, and off to a shady spot beneath an old oak. Filled with equal measures of delight and embarrassment, she giggled at the sight of Kyle and Logan placing a red velvet fainting couch beneath the branches. Curran ensconced her gently upon it as the lads went off and she protested weakly that she was not dying, and this was all too much.

  Happiness flooded her as Seaghan threw himself down in the grass beside the cobbled path and Curran perched at the foot of the couch, resting his arm along the back support. She felt cocooned in affection. It was new, this feeling, and addictive.

  “What did you do?” Seaghan asked Curran with a suspicious grin.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Morrigan said before Curran could reply. “He’s weary of this bed rest, as I am.” Seaghan didn’t have to know what else Eleanor had forbidden, or the trouble it had caused.

  “We men have it easy,” Curran said. “I’m beginning to understand what a spoiled lot we are.”

  Morrigan fluffed her skirts. “Why didn’t Mackinnon come with you?” she asked Seaghan.

  “It isn’t easy coaxing Aodhàn into the big house. But he sends his best wishes.”

  Morrigan rubbed her arms; though she wore long sleeves and the day was warm, an unaccountable rash of goosebumps flared. “I’d like to get to know him better.” She had no idea what she would say to the man if she ever saw him again, but there was no denying this chafing urge. She glanced at her husband. “Curran thinks so highly of you both.”

  Violet brought a teacup into the garden. “Your herb drink, mistress.”

  Seaghan rose and clasped her hand. “Take care of yourself, lass. Next time I visit, I’ll bring Aodhàn, even if I have to drag him by the ankles.”

  “I’ll see you off.” Curran rose and kissed Morrigan before following Seaghan.

  Gloominess and irritation revived as soon as she was left alone. She wanted to ride her beautiful mare, and admire the mountains surrounding her new home. She wanted to visit Glenelg’s crofts and show the women that she was no different than they. Instead she was held prisoner to a bed, like an old, sick woman.

  Soothed by the lonely cour-lee, cour-lee of a whaup foraging by the pond, she closed her eyes.

  She remembered that mist of color she’d glimpsed around Aodhàn Mackinnon, and the sensation of being shocked when their hands touched. She’d been sure at the time that he’d felt it too, but now she doubted her memory, since he couldn’t be bothered to visit.

  Only the curlew’s faint cry broke the quiet of the afternoon. Drifting deeper, she saw the hidden green world far beneath the surface of the sea. There were the iridescent turrets; rippling banners invited her into the castle on the ocean floor.

  Now that she’d found it, she, too, would meet Curran’s lion, and the beautiful ladies. Maybe she could help him in his quest.

  An enormous moon grinned like a fat old woman, the color and texture of yellowed heirloom lace. It sank lazily into the water, spreading outward in an ever-expanding froth of white.

  She headed towards the castle gates but there was the seal, barking, cutting her off as it transformed into a man. “You’ve come at last,” he said, pulling her down. He seemed to want to drink her in, the way he held her so tightly and kissed her so deeply.

  The castle was forgotten. The water lost its greenish hue and darkened to black as the moon set. Morrigan floated to the surface. She woke, startled from sleep, and sat upright. />
  Curran was there, legs stretched out on the grass, his back against the couch. He must have returned while she slept and dozed off as well, but her movement woke him. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and yawned.

  The curlew keened sadly. Morrigan glanced around the garden, feeling the seal’s presence. Words from the dream turned to dust as she tried to recapture them, leaving only gauzy images of pale light beneath warm ocean waves.

  Wiping perspiration from her forehead, Morrigan leaped from the couch.

  “Morrigan?” Curran stood too, frowning.

  She limped to the old iron gate in the stone wall and looked out at the forest through the bars. No one was there. Perhaps all this rest and boredom had unhinged her.

  Curran came up and put his arms around her waist. “What is it, darling?” She turned and nestled against him, drawing in an essence of trust and safety.

  But she couldn’t let go of the dream. “Nothing,” she said. “I woke and didn’t know where I was.”

  Extricating herself from his embrace, she left the wall and walked to the pond. She sat at its edge and regarded her reflection in the surface of the water. Her hair had loosened from its clasp. There were shadows beneath her eyes.

  Yet she felt the flush rise like a flame through her cheeks. The pale, tired girl vanished, replaced by that radiant creature no one else knew, the hidden Morrigan, born from secrets, madness, and rage.

  A wicked, unfathomable smile curved the reflection’s lips as her husband dropped onto the grass beside her and kissed her temple.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GAILY OUTFITTED IN their most colorful dresses and bright plaid shawls, the women of Glenelg gathered for the traditional digging of carrots on Dòmhnach Curran, Carrot Sunday.

  “You may go,” Eleanor told Morrigan, “if you promise not to overdo things. Here.” She held out a bag, embroidered with green holly leaves and dainty red berries. “Use my crioslachan to keep any booty you find.” With a wink, she added, “Though somehow I doubt carrots will ever be needed to make you fertile.”

  “Thank you,” Morrigan said. One moment frowning and stern, the next blithe and generous, Eleanor was a contradiction, and always, there was that odd sense of familiarity and instinctive trust.

  “Hang it here, on your belt,” the midwife instructed as they made their way to the forest.

  Laughter and chattering echoed off the mountains, though most was spoken in the Gaelic Morrigan couldn’t understand.

  “Would you care to learn some?” Agnes Campbell asked.

  “Aye,” Morrigan said. “Teach me ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ for when my child comes.”

  “Gille is a boy,” Agnes said, “And caileag is girl. But you might as well forget the Gaelic for boy, my lady. You’re going to have a wee daughter, a nighean.”

  Rachel approached Morrigan from the other side. “You and your husband are still on a honeymoon,” she said. “We call that mìos nam pòg. The month of kisses.”

  “Mus name pock,” Morrigan dutifully repeated.

  The women laughed at her. “Mees nim pawk,” Rachel said. “Gaelic is a language born from the sea. Let it flow.”

  Her companions gaped and smirked when Morrigan unearthed three monstrously deformed carrots the moment she pushed her fork into the soil.

  Three! What good fortune for the laird and his lady, they all exclaimed.

  Tess told her that such contortions were a powerful sign of fertility, and to find three so quickly, well, mistress must indeed be fertile. The poor lass stood blushing, shifting from foot to foot.

  Morrigan blushed too. No doubt she’d been the subject of gossip from the moment Curran had announced he was taking a wife, and the question of why he’d done it in such haste had been clearly answered, thanks to her fall and William Watson’s revealing sermon. Though she was two years younger than Tess, she was pregnant, and had ended up that way without the legal and moral benefit of marriage.

  Soon Tess pulled her own forked carrot from the ground, which drew Violet and a hopeful Rachel to the same spot. Agnes, Eleanor, and the others dispersed, saying the last thing they wanted were more weans, and they’d prefer nice, uniform carrots.

  It seemed they’d barely begun when Eleanor ordered Morrigan to rest on a blanket near Tess, who went on digging for them both.

  “Have you a sweetheart to give your carrots to?” Morrigan asked the girl.

  “Maybe. I fear he sees me as no more than a sister.”

  Eleanor brought Morrigan a tumbler of cold water from one of the burns and sat beside her, wiping her damp forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Have you ever been married?” Morrigan asked.

  “Me?” the woman replied. “Hardly.”

  “Did you never find anyone to love?”

  The midwife made a phlegmy sound of disgust. “I did indeed.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to keep things as they were. That isn’t the way it’s done though, is it? He wanted me in his bed every night, bearing one babe after another, making him breakfast and dinner.”

  “How else is there?”

  “You’re aye young, mistress. I have no desire to sour you on wedded bliss.”

  “Please, Mrs.— Eleanor, tell me. How did you want things?”

  “I wanted to spend time with him, aye, but I’ve a life of my own, and didn’t wish to relinquish it in favor of serving his needs from dawn to dusk.”

  “Would he not have allowed you to be a midwife?”

  Eleanor shook her head. “Can you hear what you’re saying, mistress? Aye, he said he’d give me the freedom I required. And I pointed out that if marriage meant he suddenly had the power to take it, or give it, then it was already lost.”

  “Oh.” Morrigan tried to sort through that.

  Eleanor tucked a few strands of escaped hair back under her kerchief. “Someday you’ll understand, though wed to the handsome, whisky-voiced laird, maybe not.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. Morrigan stiffened, wondering if she’d done something wrong. “Men never cease praising us,” she said. “They go on and on about how important we are. But if they really believed that, there would be no laws forbidding women all that men have, and enjoy. Education, Parliament, fields of science. I could be a physician.” She shook her dirt-crusted index finger in Morrigan’s face. “Watch out when men start to praise you. It’s their means of keeping you willingly in fancy gilt cages.”

  She laughed, but it was not a happy sound.

  Morrigan nodded. She wasn’t sure when she’d ever felt quite so unclear, but Eleanor’s lecture did make her recollect all that Curran had given her: the emerald and diamond necklace, the wardrobe full of clothing. Stoirmeil. Were they innocent gifts, or bribes, artfully designed for some murky purpose?

  Gloaming settled over the hills, bringing cooler air and a mist. The women returned to Kilgarry so Tess, the oldest daughter living in the house, could bake the Michael strùan.

  Cereal meal, eggs, and butter were whipped with the richest cream. The oven was cleaned out and restocked with sacred wood: bramble, oak, and rowan.

  Every detail here had importance. Every act, specific meaning. No wonder Ibby caviled about tradition during the wedding preparations. These Highlanders lived close to the earth and seasons. Closer, Morrigan would wager, to those old gods and goddesses than Father Drummond might care to admit.

  While the cake cooled, the women drank tea and admired Tess’s culinary skills.

  “We’ll carry it with us to Mass,” Fionna said. “Father Drummond will bless it. Master Curran always attends our Saint Michael’s Day Mass, though he was raised in the Kirk. It’s but one of his many courtesies.”

  “Glenelg changes little,” Beatrice said, “no matter what landowners do.” She stared around the huge kitchen. “I mind Father Drummond blessing our own strùan.”

  “You were Catholic?” Morrigan asked. She’d never before considered Beatrice and religion in any way
connected.

  “Not after the clearings,” she replied in her usual emotionless manner. “Not Catholic or anything else.”

  After a short silence, Fionna said, “I didn’t lose my faith. I know John and Beth are waiting in Heaven to be reunited with Tess and me. If I couldn’t believe that….” Her lips trembled. “Without religion, what is there to comfort you when a child dies? What is there to keep you from going mad?”

  Tess pressed her cheek to her mother’s and squeezed her shoulders.

  “John?” Morrigan asked.

  “My husband. Beth was my daughter.” Fionna stroked Tess’s hair. “It was almost too late for Tess as well the day Thomas Ramsay found us. There he stood in his fine clothes. I thought we were about to be persecuted again, maybe chased out of the ruins. I tried to stop him when he picked Tess up, but I was too weak. Every one of us alive today is here because of him. I would’ve done anything for him and will for his son until my last breath. God made Thomas Ramsay his angel of mercy.”

  Morrigan remembered Aunt Ibby telling her about Beth, the child who had starved to death. The heathen lass inside her spoke. If God had brought him a day or two earlier, Beth might’ve lived, too. Not content to stop there, she added, What if God had prevented Randall Benedict from clearing his tenants? Nobody would’ve starved or frozen that winter. Hannah might still be with you. You might have your mother.

  Kyle and Logan brought in a freshly slaughtered lamb, their clothes redolent with the tangy scent of autumn.

  Tess blushed and knotted her fingers together. Shy embarrassment shouted her secret, though no one but Morrigan appeared to notice.

  Since Logan was her brother, Kyle MacPhee of the curling brown hair and bright intelligent eyes must be the male for whom Tess had gathered carrots. Morrigan leaned down to scratch Antiope’s ears and wondered how she could assist the romance. No doubt Kyle was oblivious, as Tess had implied. Perhaps Logan could help, but she’d have to be careful with that, as brothers could bedevil a lass half out of her senses.

  Teasing had been Nicky’s special genius. He’d used it liberally, his intent, she suspected, to get her spine up and keep her from sinking into lassitude or self-pity.